


a city in our image

by iyzze



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Dialogue Heavy, F/F, Future Fic, Hazel’s kind of mean but it’s bc she’s hurting so it’s okay :(, Internalized Homophobia, POV First Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-World War II, Special Friends, but i did specifically avoid using any slurs, idek if i ship it tbh i just don't actually remember enough about amina's character ever oops, idk if u can tell but i rarely do description lmao, just bc i've realised that i personally find that a little bit off-putting sometimes, the keyword here is /yearning/, this sounds about right lmao, when you have an interest in history but not in facts, zero research bc i think w my feelings not my brain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:11:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26320171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iyzze/pseuds/iyzze
Summary: The year is 1947. Hazel Wong has not spoken to Daisy Wells in person for several years - that is until she agrees to meet up with her again.
Relationships: Daisy Wells/Hazel Wong
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	a city in our image

**Author's Note:**

> This is the background that I Did Not include  
> >Daisy and Hazel broke up in early 1942 due to demands for women in the increasing war effort. While Hazel had been content to settle in the countryside and farm for the country, Daisy had been adamant that she continue to work undercover. Their relationship is strained and they struggle to communicate.

The November air was biting and cold, and its winds were blowing harshly into my face. I shivered and wrapped my woolen scarf tighter around myself. I was running late to a very important meeting with perhaps the most important person I had ever met. This would be the first time I had met with Daisy Wells in person for years. I was nervous, sick to my stomach. I felt shy and all too uncomfortably fourteen years old again. But I had promised that I would meet her at exactly ten minutes to ten, and I could never break a promise made to Daisy Wells.

A few more miserable minutes of walking led me to a small bar. Paint was peeling away from the exterior walls, and in my head I couldn’t quite reconcile the rundown building in front of me with the ever-perfect Daisy I had last known.

Beyond being just another grotty bar in London, this bar was something of a secret. Hidden in plain sight, access was granted only through a password given at the door. It was perhaps a little on the nose, but on the night that I met Daisy the password was simply the word ‘courage’ - and how poignant that would be.

I was hesitant to enter the bar, even after having been granted access at the door. It was so busy inside - all chipped wooden tables and dented concrete floors. It wasn’t the most welcoming sight, and it definitely wasn’t anywhere I would have chosen to meet - but I supposed that sometimes comfort had to come second to practicality. There were dozens of patrons sitting at various mismatched seats, but I couldn’t see Daisy anywhere. She blended into the background the same as she always had, I thought. So normal and English that you could hardly notice her. I was stuck in my head, absentmindedly scanning the room for her -- but I couldn’t quite find her. For a moment I was struck with a violent grip of anxiety - was Daisy even here? Had she left me all alone once again? I backed myself towards a wall, hoping to calm myself down some before trying to leave.

And then I saw her.

She sat there, despondent on a cracked leather bar-stool, nursing a small glass of whiskey. It was a drink I knew she had no taste for and it was apparent on her face. All these years later and still Daisy Wells was a stubborn enigma. She seemed out of place in the cacophony of couples hanging around her - hair immaculately styled around her face, dress suited to her body the way all things were. She was a vision of absolute beauty, every bit the same English Miss I had fallen in love with when we were fourteen.

Reasonable young men sat with pints of ales between them, young women worn down by the last few years sat with a pitcher of gin and tonic between them -- and Daisy. Beautiful, headstrong Daisy. I hadn’t seen her in person for four years by this point and our last letter had been months before. I took a deep breath and approached her and sat down gently next to her. She stiffened slightly.

“No man is an island, Ms Wells.”

A silence hung between us for a moment, heavy and unsure. Daisy took another agonised sip of her whiskey.

“Nor a woman, Watson.”

I felt myself blush slightly, like it was just another shy conversation during prep hours at school. Secret notes and shared glances, the kind of trust that builds only when you know that no one else will ever understand you in quite the same way. There were a lot of reasons why Daisy and I had always been such good friends. We were each outsiders in our own ways - though, while I could never help that I looked different from the rest of the students at Deepdean, Daisy certainly chose to let her intelligence isolate her from other people. Beyond even that though, it was our shared traits that made us so totally similar. Our passion for mystery and puzzle solving united us on one front, and the uncomfortable truth of our feelings towards other girls on another.  
I had often asked myself what was wrong with it, what was wrong with us. How could a love so gentle towards people like ourselves be anything other than healthy? But I knew really that we were never to question it, never to question what we had been taught - even though the very atmosphere of this bar contradicted me. A whole room of people not only united by the same trait, but celebrating it, a quiet riot against a world of hate. A whole room of people just like us, and I wasn’t sure that I liked it.

“It’s good to see you, Daisy. This is rather an odd choice for a friendly reunion isn’t it, don’t you think?”

“It’s not like that Watson - Hazel, I mean. It’s just that for so long this has been the only place I’ve felt myself.”

I was incredulous. Of all the bars I had heard of in London, dozens were devoted just to people who couldn’t be freely themselves - and although I had never so much as stepped foot in one before I was certain there must be nicer premises than this. Surely a woman such as Daisy would rather find a more, shall we say, upscale rendezvous point?

“A city like London? And you’ve only found one haunt?”

She looked hurt for a moment, like every word I said reminded her of some painful truth, and I felt a sharp tug of guilt mixed with a sick satisfaction. The things she had said to me - I should hope that she was hurting.

“It’s not like that Hazel. I live in the countryside now. A village in Suffolk. I have -”  
She broke off, looking awkwardly to the side, so unlike the girl I had first met all those years ago at Deepdean. Face still pointed at the glass in front of her, she continued.  
“I have a partner there now.”

“Really? The brave, Honourable Daisy Wells content to settle in farmland? I don’t remember you  
being so keen on that idea a few years ago, I don’t remember you wanting to settle with me?”  
There was a specific stinging in my heart, and I felt betrayed - as though it wasn’t the lifestyle that had put Daisy off of the idea of moving away from city life, but me.

“It’s not like that, Hazel. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing about you."

“So now I’m ridiculous?” I knew I was being ridiculous. I knew that Daisy would have an excuse, a compelling argument. She always did, afterall. I remembered a time when I had envied her, if for nothing else for her ability to always form the perfect argument at a moment’s notice. She could have been a lawyer, or even a writer if she’d really cared for it. But for Daisy Wells, there was only ever mystery and adventure.

“That’s not what I meant. There was a war Hazel, and then it ended and I couldn’t find you. No-one knew where you were but I thought maybe I could find you if I went to the countryside.”

“There’s an awful lot of countryside, Daisy. So, what? You joined up with a new special friend? Scoured the towns of the south-east for a few months? Gave up and settled into the dream life that you knew I wanted?”

“Wanted? Surely you haven’t given up on being happy?”

There was a pout on her face - pretty and petulant - striking in the way that only Daisy could ever be. It almost hurt to look at her - an expression on her face so achingly familiar that all at once I remembered the stolen evenings spent in the boarding house at Deepdean. Sometimes I wonder what could have happened between us - if not for the war, if not for the violent clash of our two personality types. But it doesn’t matter what could have been. Because nothing ever became of it. Because nothing ever could.

“I can’t do it anymore, Daisy, okay? We’re not children anymore. We can’t get away with things like this. Besides, me and Alexander are-”

“You and Alexander? But I thought he was-”

“-with George. Yes. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices, Daisy. Sometimes you can’t live the life you want with the person you love.”

We settled once more into silence.

“What did you mean we ‘can’t get away with it’? How could you say that in a place like this?”

“It’s illegal, Daisy. This place could be shut down any month now.”

“Maybe some of us still have hope that one day we’ll be able to live comfortably in a big city without fear.”

“You’re living in a fantasy, Daisy. I admire your confidence, your faith that the world might one day grow comfortable with who we are. But it doesn’t work like that. The world doesn’t work like that. Sometimes the best future you can hope for is one where you aren’t happy, but you’re not dead. Is it really so important to you to risk your life in the hopes that you might make change?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. I don’t know that she understood exactly where I was coming from, but she seemed subdued.

“Everyone needs a cause, Hazel. I figure personal freedom is a cause as good as any other. We’ve spent the last few years performing the labour to support someone else’s fight. When you look around us, at the other people here, just like us - don’t you think we deserve a fight to be fought on our behalf too?”  
And she was back. The same kind of haughty, wounded pride she had always been capable of. I don’t know if she was doing it to deliberately wind me up, but hearing the same childish arrogance in her tone drove me mad.

“I don’t want to talk about this Daisy. Not here. Not now. Not with you, quite frankly. Alexander and I are friendly - we may not be romantic like you and your girl - but we’re as safe as is possible these days, and that’s enough for me. If you don’t mind leaving this topic be - at least for now - maybe we could just catch up? How have you been?”

  
I was angry, impossibly angry. The kind of angry that’s all tense muscles and tight tones - but I couldn’t bear to leave her just yet. Impossible as ever, Daisy Wells was magnetic. In a room full of tolerant, beautiful women, there was only ever Daisy - a Daisy that was hurting both herself and others, but a Daisy I knew I could grow to love just the same as any other.

“You know, Hazel? I don’t enjoy the countryside so much. Not without you. The peace and quiet isn’t for me - and maybe it wouldn’t work even with you by my side. But when Elizabeth and I first moved to this silly little village - I was still in detective mode. I thought that maybe. At the very least it would have a dark secret. Like in all of those novels we used to read back at school. Maybe I was just looking for a connection to you. But there wasn’t a secret. Just an ordinary village with a population of farmers and families. Maybe Elizabeth and I are - were - the dark secret.

That piqued my interest.

“Were?” I questioned. “Just a few minutes ago you said that you ‘have’ a partner. Is the life you stole from us not as lovely as you planned?”

“No, Hazel - she’s not the right person for me to live life with. That’s why I wanted to meet with you, to speak with you. I thought that by meeting in a place for, you know, people like us, we could talk. I hoped that maybe you’d see how I’ve grown, and maybe we could learn to be friends again. Though I would like something more.”

“But would that be enough for you, Daisy. Will I ever be enough?”

“Anything is enough with you, Hazel. Please, just give me a chance.”

And there it was. From hostility to the hesitant new beginnings of an old romance in just a few moments. I didn't know that I could trust her again - our parting was so far from being amicable, and she was so clearly still so passionate about so many issues. Our short lives have felt so long to me - incident after incident, fear after fear. I've always wanted a quiet life. I wanted a house in the countryside, and I wanted peace and I wanted privacy and friendship and above all else I wanted Daisy - but not as she was then. I didn’t know exactly what she did during the war. She couldn’t tell me, or she didn’t want to. But it probably involved some level of government secrecy. I’m not sure if I was jealous of her - her confidence, her skill. But thinking of the years we’ve spent apart made me feel almost sick, and I always wanted to trust her.

“Okay,” I said, “if you promise not to instigate a rebellion, you can come to dinner next week. If you come around on Thursday evening there’ll be a few of us. Alexander and I, obviously, and then Kitty and her husband, if he can get off work.”

“Kitty’s married?” She was surprised. How isolated had Daisy been? I must have been staring at her slightly, because she takes another awkward sip of her whiskey. I check the time. It’s only half past ten, but I know I’ll have to leave soon. I leant in close to her and touched her upper arm.

“If you come around during the day on Thursday, we could catch up properly. Just us, I promise.”

I passed her a slip of paper, my address written on it in one of the many codes we had used to arrange meet-ups at school. I hoped against hope that she’d still be able to decipher it, to show she still cared about the times we’d spent together.

“Come by at half six for dinner, but if you want to make a day of it - feel free to come around for a bun break.” I smiled at her as I left the bar, feeling tense but less worried than I had been before.

It was comforting to see Daisy again, for all of the strangeness that she brought with her. Seeing her felt like seeing the first sunrise of spring - when after a winter of waking up into darkness, the sky is pink and blue and warm before you even have to leave for work. Seeing Daisy felt like seeing hope - and for all that I’d been angry at her, I couldn’t help but agree with her thinking. I’d always loved living in Britain, even during the stress of the war - but maybe a post-war Britain could be revolutionary. Maybe we had our own fight, and maybe one day the George-and-Alexanders and the Daisy-and-Hazels of the world could live openly and without fear.

I stepped out into the street once again, the sky so much darker than before. And yet, somehow, now that I had met Daisy - the world was warm again. I wore my scarf loose around my neck, and I didn’t bother to button my coat up fully. A new confidence had struck me, and I stepped out into the night proudly.


End file.
